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Diversify. Diversify. Frigidiare
A quick thought. We miss diversified car companies. We miss diversified retailers. We miss when our car companies did amusing things. We liked Ford when it made Fordson Tractors, Tri-Motors and Philco...
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Cadillac Cool Inside; BMW Totally Cool Everywhere
IRVINE, Calif. – BMW is the coolest car brand in America. Or so says Kelley Blue Book, which has just released current winners of their 2009 Brand Image Awards. And Cadillac? Boy do Americans like the...
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Artificial Owl Sees Detroit’s Future
We found the rather spectacular website Artificial Owl with some hauntingly beautiful photos of Detroit’s empty Union Station. The site is all about photos of abandoned places. I cannot help but think...
View ArticleDealer Group Rings Up GM’s Saturn
DALLAS – Will Saturn become a retailer? Very interesting way for the brand to survive. An investor group that includes private equity firm Black Oak Partners, LLC, working together with a number of...
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A Blueprint for General Motors
DETROIT – No brand is safe now and General Motors (NYSE: GM) is indeed in a mess. All the brands are damaged. It should not be this way. All of them lost sight of what their mission was in GM. You...
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Killing off Chief Pontiac Won’t Make GM Tribe Happy
DETROIT - Not that I really like Pontiacs these days. They’ve not been interesting for a long time. But now, there are serious discussions that GM will announce that Pontiac will be shut down as a...
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Missing Those Station Wagons? I Miss Dad’s Opel Kadett
We know that CAFE fuel standards are the culprit in killing off bigger cars in the U.S., but its manufacturers who are responsible for killing off the word STATION WAGON in their marketing. And so,...
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Get Me a 2010 Pontiac Trans Am
General Motors thinks it has killed off the Pontiac. And what a brilliant move that is. Let’s see, you need to sell MORE cars cause your company is broke, and you cut out yet one more product line? And...
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GM’s Dead Brands: One in Six Sales
We came across the below statistics from the website www.gm-volt.com. It turns out that the dead brands of General Motors accounted for one in six sales at the ailing U.S. automaker. Writes their...
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GM’s “OK” Used Car Brand Would Do for Defunct Dealers
So what does a GM dealer that used to have a Saturn or Saab franchise do now that these brands are gone? Some are going solo, as used car and repair dealerships. Many Chrysler dealers are affiliating...
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Updates on Rochas, Grumman, GM Dealers and the Pan Am Worldport
Thoughts on some current news items: Proctor & Gamble just released its revived collection of Rochas, under the leadership of Marco Zanini. Proctor & Gamble shut down Rochas in 2006, and...
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Long Live the Pontiac Chief
LAGUNA BEACH, Calif. - I recently attended the NHRA Winter Nationals and noticed that the most popular body for those outrageous funny cars seemed to be Pontiac. So when I asked another spectator why,...
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Top Company Museums To Visit This Summer
Sadly, we don’t think we will be getting to ANY of these this summer, but we nevertheless thought it would be useful to publish a list of some top corporate and factory museums to visit this summer....
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Shutting Auto Dealers Caused Job Loss
WASHINGTON, D.C. - Just off the headlines. The massive shutdown of dealers ordered by the Obama administration was a massive failure. Not that you couldn’t have noticed by just talking to some of the...
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Willys Kaiser Jeep Lives On, Sort Of
Keeping an old brand viable is sometimes no more difficult than packaging. Here, a specialized Willys Jeep Wrangler, which according to a Chrysler LLC release dates from 2004. Basically, it’s a...
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GM Auctioning off the Historic Estate With Opel and Vauxhall
DETROIT – Don’t sell the meat department of the family grocery store to keep the business afloat. There is a horrible thought floating about General Motors. GM would depart from manufacturing in...
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Mark the New GM Hummer Revival as Model
The Hummer brand, the descendant name of the Gulf War-era Humvee, will apparently “relaunch” in 2022, with a planned Super Bowl commercial, according to The Wall Street Journal. It will be electric,...
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Protecting Old Brands in China
BEIJING – Do the Chinese understand brands better than the U.S.? In some ways, yes. The Chinese interest in American brands, it is hoped, will help preserve a few. But one good thing; it is China that...
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Pontiac: No More Room For Middle Brands
A BrandlandUSA reader laments the missed opportunity in Pontiac: It may be that Pontiac is gone and erased from the accounting books of GM, and it may be that the heritage of Pontiac lives in the...
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Briefs: Pickup Truck Collecting Gains Favor International Among Top 25...
Pickup collecting is gaining favor as 1970s muscle car prices have gone too high for new collectors. The Wall Street Journal has profiled the top 25 collectible pickup trucks, though any older pickup...
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